>> host: is it not as knowledgeable as other data? >> guest: i think when you're talking about -- it's hard to make the generalizations, which i think is one of the reasons it is often challenging for the charities to come up with her the right tools. but i do think there is a hierarchy of tools and that starts with quantitative data that looks at the effectiveness or not because the established standards of the charity service. i think everything else is secondary to those types of measures, to the extent that that's possible. ..

the question of, why couldn't this be done for -- are there not market mechanism. but if they want to do that, do we need to form a charity? but i digress. the key question i have for you is, from our work, we observed that there's a little known fact at the other end of the spectrum, when you look to nonprofit sector as a whole, there's the one percent problem. the "occupy wall street" is upset that 43% of the profits go to 1% of the sector.

i actually think that's notion that there are too many charities is a red herring. because the reality is that most of those teeny weany little charities get minuscule -- they get 4% of the revenue to something like 60% of the charities. they're minuscule. that's really not the main event. the main event, which you also talk about, are these giants, and that i think you also mentioned in 40 years, there's been virtually know -- no change in the largest organization. so it's not to the proliferation of smile organizations but isn't the bigger problem massive, massive charities that may be very effective at marketing themselves but very poor at really showing results. would you agree with me that's a bigger problem? >> guest: i would agree. they're actually part and parcel of the same overarching problem.

i think they're all part of the failure of creative instruction. so we all know from in my case, my economics in college, 122 years ago, that one of the great things about the for-profit, the free enterprise market place, this motion of construction. peep with great ideas win, and bold willed outdated ideas that don't work, lose. doesn't work the charitable sector. the study is that the top 40 -- if you look at the fortune 500, fortune 50, from 40 years ago, you find that bethlehem steel, the american can, they're all gone, replace bid apple and google. that's why the american economy still works. on the charitable side it doesn't work because it's the same organizations at the top, which reflects how people give and who they give it to, and

it's also brand names and blocks the way for the innovator, and i believe that's the biggest challenge. >> host: if i put into it two sentences -- >> guest: can't putting in in two sentences. >> host: the current state of affair he or 0 she who does the best marketing wins and the goal is that the organization with the best results and helps the most people should win. that's the essence, so let's take it from the other side and talk about the smaller charities. isn't there an impress sis message here -- when you talk about innovators, they have to reach a certain scale and size typically. so, -- to be evidence-based, performance-driven, research based, doesn't an organization have to be a certain size to have the capacity to do it? wouldn't the smaller organizations argue that this is an unreasonable requirement for them to meet? what do you think of that argue.

and. >> they should be able to show the effectiveness of their service before they start. >> host: don't have the resources to built a measurement system and they're doing michigan on the fly, and for us to require it is unreasonable. >> guest: i actually think -- like you -- tapped out. expect more from the larger organizations, provide data and analysis, and in a transparent way i would not expect in a small organization. sure, any startup needs to grow and to prove their case, and should have time to do that. they're one of the -- one idea i think you probably know is occasionally flipped around is we should put higher barriers into entry into the system. the system is too big. i disagree with that there needs to be a time place for -- a time and place for other places to prove it. they have to show their value,

whether donors should be supporting them. >> host: another place in the book you note the irs and state oversight is very weak to begin with, and all the evidence we see, with government funding imploding, if anything, looking forward, the likelihood is there will be even less oversight and enforcement from the agencies because of the resource drains and other priorities. i think you even note the irs -- their mission is to get tax revenue and the nonprofits are not really -- then you also note in your book the affordable care act means far less money in state coffers to pay for care for the uninsured. you note it tends to measure effectiveness in government is usually squashed by politics, so special interests. so these are all, i think, fantastic insights about the challenges. and then you, as a solution, in

your solution section, you talk about the need to re-invent government. and unfortunately i'm old enough to remember the attempts by al gore and re-inventing government back in the day, and it seems like all the evidence from government, and all these challenges, would argue that the chances for re-inventing government anytime soon or slim to nil. what do you think? >> guest: am i supposed to disagree? >> host: well you recommended -- >> guest: expecting it to happen two entirely different things. let's put the framework around this conversation for the viewers. as you know, the largest source of funding for the charitable sector by far is the federal government, outstripping all other sources, all the sources by far, and larger than any -- all collections. half a trillion a year. it's -- it is.

>> host: it's there's larger bucket of money that comes from earned income when you look at the nonprofit sector, but it's the largest. >> guest: i treat those differently because income is not on a transactional basis as oppose ode a decision to give money to an organization because it is effect enough pursuing a public purpose. when i recommend re-inventing government to borrow yours al gore's phrase, i say, let's follow the money. if charities are subject to market mechanisms and market mechanisms is about dollars, we should go to the people with the greatest dollars and that's the federal government there are some signs, i think, that the obama administration, at least is thinking about that. i reference executive order that came from the office of management of budget last year, saying that a higher standard of

evidence-based work in terms of grant-making procedure. obama has done the funding for social innovation which another way of thinking how government invests in the charitable sector. none of it leaves me entirely optimistic, but it is a reasonable place to focus a certain amount of energy to think about whether it can be done at least in part. i'll be the pie-eyed optimist for once. >> host: all right. about mid-way through the book you chronicle some stories of what i refer to as the scoundrel. the two scoundrels in the sector, and one of them you refer to as the association for firefighters and paramedics, mascaraing as a -- masquerading as a chaired, and you say a web site that is a marvelous obfuscation, revealing not a

single fact of relevance to the donor. and here's what you then point out. should be the case. number one, what is missing? there is no financial information. number two, no specific disclosures about how donated dollars are spent. number three, no information on the largess showered on afts comer hsu shall fund fundraising staff and board. so i just a position -- juxtapositioned that to later on in the book -- page 205 -- you say, social investors should focus solely on impact. so that's -- these are the two sides. but i think when i read between the lines, you're also saying, and at other points you're saying that it's critical that an organization have good fiscal management, good oversight by its board. there are a number of implicit

things that need to be in place, and i think -- i think i sent you some of the materials we have been working on. our premise is that certainly we agree that results and effectiveness and measuring that is the most important thing. no dispute. but there are at least two other critical pillars, if you will, or elements that need to be in place because if they're no in place, you're not going to have long-term impact. one of them is the question of the financial management and health of the organization, bus if it's not financially healthy, the results today will be gone tomorrow potentially. secondly, this notion of oversight and governance and if you don't have a strong board that makes sure that it's results are driven and holds the staff to account, that has ethical and strong policies and procedures procedures procedures and so forth, you

could run into scoundrels or some mismanagement. so, don't you think it's not just about solely impact but also about putting these other systems in place to get to -- and maintain impact? >> guest: i think the two things i would be -- i'm moats -- i should say, i was indebted to charity navigator for a lot of the research. and it's actually a problem -- i don't want to blow it out of proportion but one of the challenges in the charitable sector because there's no real regulation and oversight -- actually full of scoundrels. at it hard to tell because the example of the association of firefighters, rather long name. actually hard to tell there are actually 59,000 charities named veterans in the title. if you can -- if anyone in the field can tell me the difference between them, they're doing a

better job than i am. i think the challenge is finding what to me are the two things i really care about. the donor community should care about. is effectiveness and transparency. and i think if you have those two things, you'll find the right data. it's no doubt, it is -- i think i'm in entire agreement with you that great organizations will have rigor around how they spend money, have the right institutional oversight and that will result in effective organization. to me a lot of the book was about trying to focus -- not that those are necessarily bad although i question some of the overhead ratios that are often the primary focus of people's attention. not that those are irrelevant but they're the building block for the greater issue.

if you get that right the other things will follow rather than get the overhead and the administrative fees right and the rest will fall. >> host: i'm simply saying that you need to be maintaining all of those systems effectively to do it right, and if you don't have those building blocks, you won't be able to maintain it or even get there. >> guest: i don't disagree with that at all. a lot of my book was really trying to actually fairly starkly get people's attention to the fact that conversation is about effectiveness, which i think we agree on. and one of the reasons that charity navigator is launching at 3.0, which is actually been announced since my book went to rest -- i wish we had that knowledge before. get an opportunity to talk about

the fact that charity navigator 3.0 is the first global attempt to evaluate effectiveness mitchell brother called me yesterday, and said, well, who should i -- there are five v.a. organizations and which this right one. i said, i have no idea. he said it should be easy. i said, you'll have to wait because down the road there are assets coming that's going to help my poor brother, unwilling to put in half hour work to understand the environment -- the best environment for his donations. >> just a side bar on veterans organizations. we see a striking example of the scoundrels clustering around veterans, police, and firefighter organizations, and there seems to be this knowledge that that's one of the places where the american public resonates with the american public, the sacrifice and so the ability to manipulate the

story-telling and the marketing, to get those dollars by scoundrels, is enormous. so i think it's great you highlighted an organization in that area. >> guest: we have all had the experience, you and me and probably everybody watching, the phone rings at the dinnertime, someone from the policeman's, veterans, firefighters, fighting cancer, where we also see a lot of scoundrels collect -- fill in the a blank organization asking for money. and no one just on the phone, around dinnertime, can possibly have a thoughtful conversation. people want to help. there's an impulse to help, but really important issues and really important people in our lives. but it's impossible to make that judgment, and that's why i thing scoundrels collect around a topic and invest in boilerroom phone calling and do pretty well out of it often. >> host: more about donors. a great stud jim,0y, i think the

first of its -- a great study, the first of its kind in years on studying door know behavior by hope consulting you've note that the results of the study indicate that 90% of donors say that effectiveness of the organization is most important to them. but then when you scroll down, perhaps two or three percent actually do the work and follow up on that. in. >> guest: in defense of donors, i give you the following argument. four years of research on this whole subject. in a way, with a few exceptions, and a couple of cause areas, perhaps reviewed by others that do a deep dive. but for the vast majority of cause areas of nonprofits, the average donor who has limited times and means to do a whole

lot of research, there's no there there for that donor. in other words, the amount of publicly available evidence-based research, in most cause areas, is virtually nonexistent. so, i sometimes have a problem with this sort of -- beating up the donor, if you will, because that's what can be inferred. i'm not saying -- the -- >> guest: i do -- >> host: i'm not saying there isn't a problem and not saying there isn't evidence that certain number of -- or certain group of donors are going to row many impulse-driven in their giving. i'm not saying no to that. i also think the 90% figure is an indicator of hope that if there was more easily accessible, readily accessible, results-based data, publicly

available -- that's the key -- and you don't have to don't a stonewalling, that if it was publicly available information, a lot more people would use it, and i think that's part of our challenge for donors. it's just -- they're between a rock and a hard place. the last thing i'll say on this, one of the concludes that consulting makes not mentioned in the book, but their recommendation is a seal or rating system, and that the evidence is that donors, regardless of income, always will be looking for information that is free, easily accessible, and easily understandable. and i think you also talk about relying upon expert information. but even the experts need to get information, and it's just not there. so, what are your reactions to that? >> well, a little bit of the chicken and the egg problem, ken

in my view. i would say that if donors demanded it, charities would follow. they are -- that's the market mechanism i think about and write about. i think we have a case where donors don't demand it, therefore charities don't provide it. not the other way around, charities don't provide it and donors don't look for it. one of the things that was mentioned in the book that always grabbed me was a report in the -- a paragraph in the hope consulting report, a focus group, where they interviewed a guy, mark kay, and i think mark kay actually encapsulated the donor mentality pretty well. he said, look, i don't do research because i know that charities are going to do some good. where i put my time and research is things like products.

i buy the microwave,'ll do research. i don't need to do the research for charities. i think that actually captures the prevailing ethic right now among donors. part of my book is, i would say, plea to the donor community tree think it. all charities are not alike. there's good ones, bad ones, guys in the middle. we have to get money to the best so they survive, and that the others don't. >> host: i think the reality out there may be a little bit more hopeful or nuanced than that, because when we do have six million visits at this point per year, and as we've been promoting 3.0 and our other efforts become -- to emphasize more on results, if anything, the amount of support we have gotten, the amount of positive reactions from users and from donors to charities, has been enormous, and anytime we've had conversations where you sort of connect the dots for people and

say, did you know that the organization that you're supporting has provided no evidence it's actually effective, and there are others that do. when you have those conversations with people and walk them through it, most donors are certainly open, and somewhat surprised. i think there may be some implicit messages but i don't think it's intentional on the part of donors. >> guest: i think we have built up an ethic around how people donate. the process, how to do it often done through organizations they know. this where is you made the argument about brand, brand names. it's about the charities of friends, relationships win. done out of habit. 80% of people give to the same charities year after year. that's why, not to be up optimistic, but that why i think

two-thirds of the people in the hope charity -- hope consulting survey did zero research. but there are some, six million is a great number. happy it would be 10 million. how do we transit? the challenge is how to get from six million to everyone thinks about it. we're nowhere near that and we're on the same page in saying that people -- that's where we need to have the conversation. you're not donors. you're investors and that's the change that needs to happen. >> host: a fairly long way of going. i hope we can collaborate on that for the benefit of the whole system. >> host: amen to that. so, hope consulting story, you mentioned the 80% that don't do research. another hopeful sign they pointed to was 15-some-ad odd percent of the people they surveyed, even if they're not currently doing research, there's evidence there's an

openness and that when they do the calculations, we're talking about tens of billions of dollars that could be unleashed if there was more robust data available readily accessible for donors. so, what are you thoughts on that whole part of the research? do you share that optimism, we can unleash that focus? >> i don't know if i actually read the hope consulting report as being particularly optimistic. they said there was some money be to unleashed, and i don't doubt that at all. but talking about $1.5 trillion economy, talking about 40 jim,0 50, billion dollars. i'm not here to sped on 40, $50 million. but -- -- .

>> host: there might be more money unleashed in other sectors. >> guest: there's also my point which it's great to get another 40 or 50 billion into it. great if we got the 1.5 bridge. >> host: trillion. >> guest: trillion, yes. just the hundred billion which is the form of grants. we got that moving in the right direction, a lot of good things would happen. >> host: y we are today is far, far, far away in another universe from that at the moment, and seems like some of your reviews in the book are early adopters, innovators that can give us hope but unfortunately there are far and few between at this stage. so there's a lot more that needs to be done. >> guest: i actually think the

charitable -- i talked over the last few years and before that, and i'm sure you have talked to many more -- people will sort of -- the innovators who want to make a contribution through the charitable sector. i think it's all about how to get a spotlight. on them. get resources to them so they can provide innovation and prove their innovations or not. win or lose, get the chance to succeed in the same way the steve jobs of the world succeed on the for-profit side. no not terms of making a lot of money but human impact. it's very hard for the innovators to surface and that's what the book is about, and what charity navigator 3.0 is about. >> host: yes, sir. what about the other efforts to try to get to scale and reach effectiveness, efforts like social businesses and impact investing? what are your thoughts on that world as a way to get results?

>> guest: i think there are -- i don't pretend to be an expert. i wrote a book. i've made some decisions what i was going to focus nobody the book and what i wasn't. there are some innovations and ideas. the beady corporation, the marriage between for-profit skill sets and public purses. social impact investing, which i think is still being stud yesterday. i know there's new studies coming out from stanford, in the coming months, see where that would be effective. so i actually -- i always say that everyone needs to prove their case. i think those things are interesting and what is following is break-through ways for useful purposes. >> host: i also have heard feedback there's a worry that we have a dwindling pie within the

chartable sector, given the economy, and what is generally going on, and the competition for dollars, and one of the perhaps unintended consequences of social business and all of that, is taking from that limited pie. i think the notion behind it is to free up new dollars from -- new stakeholders that want to get some kind of return in a different way. isn't there also a danger that things could get even more difficult for the charitable sector? >> guest: i guess. so again, i disclaim certain expertise in it. i don't go too far. i think a lot i write about is the best ideas win ask the worst ideas lose. one of the things i noticed about the narrative, the norms of the charitable sector, is this idea that it's not okay

that the best ideas lose. and i am a firm believer that some of the besteds are in the for-profit sector, god bless them, let them win, and the best ideas in the charitable sector, even better, but make sure the best ideas win and flourish. >> host: i think there's a number of other efforts going on in addition to the story you told of givewell. there are a variety of other groups and efforts, and i'm just interested to hear your thoughts on them, if you're aware of them. if not i'd urge you to check them out. one is trident impact, an effort undertaken by the independent sector in a variety of other players, and the notion is to get every charity to answer five basic questions that relate to the question of their results.

and the independent sector has before set -- tried to set standards by consensus. admittedly. of the sector. in ethical practices and governance, and we've used some of that in our evolving of our rating system. and so these five questions are the base point to begin to drive result-driven thinking. >> guest: i wrote about givewell and few other organizations, not because they are the only organizations that are focused on -- a lot of people thinking about this in different ways. i've used their stories, again as really examples of what -- the right way to think about them. the more people thinking about them, the better. and i think there are a lot of different ways to think about how the charitable sector has a whole. one of the things i write about,

the independent sector ultimately came from some of the works of john d. rockefeller iii, and i told the history in part through the tension between john d. rockefeller iii on one side and john patton, the congressman from texas on the other, one of the great challenges of one of the great opponents of the foundation world, the charitable world. or at least raised questions about it. and one of rockefeller's great hopes before he died, i think too early in the car accident, was there would be some type of charity commission that would become the source of these good ideas. there's one in england i think hoped to see come to true mission the united states. but the idea died with him. i think we should all be considering those types of institutional approaches to help put the spotlight and create incentives for effectiveness as

well. >> host: when you mention the history, you cover a very interesting explosion, the explosive growth that occurred, especially, 195 -- 1954 there were changes in the tax codes and the ability to create nonprofits game like a spaghetti factory, and before it was much more difficult to do. and actually some of the research i did on this, prior to that change, basically a judge in a particular state would have their own subjective measures and bases upon which they would decide whether or not a charity could come into fruition. now it's an administrative procedure so that began the flood gates, followed by the great society, and you had the beginning of a train that you describe in the book as now going faster than the for-profit sector for the past decade or two, and even in the midst of

the great recession, in the midst of the reagan years there there was cuts, still keeps on churning on and on and on, and it's how to the largest nonprofit sector in the history of the world, and the american economy couldn't survive without it. so this is critical stuff. and it's amazing that we're in this -- we're sitting here and that the vast majority of charities cannot provide any meaningful evidence of their results. >> host: did the standard you have put in the book, i think, is sometimes referred to as the gold standard, where you talk about randomized control trials. i think the notion that charities are going to be able to achieve randomized control trials across the board is never going to be scalable. it costs millions of dollars,

tremendous research. also realities where a charity has to turn one person away and accept another person. a variety of challenges to doing that. do you see a way to get the results without requiring that standard for the charities? >> yeah. i think first of all, we saw the charities themselves having them articulate goals and deliver goals and then getting their -- asking them for the statistical approaches to measurement. i would -- the randomized control trial, which is somewhat controversy for the reasons you say, actually can be done for a lot less, now can be done for a lot less. for the gold level charities, the tom of the tier, the red crosss, we should be expecting gold level evidence of

effectiveness. part of that is not just because we should -- it's because a lot of the things charities do are really hard stuff. we know it's actually hard to educate kids. we have had flatline educational system in this country for years. we know it's hard to have better health outcomes. a lot of ideas sound good. a lot of idea are inspiring but don't move the needle. until we sort of take the hard drink and realize that things that sound good often don't help and we really need to invest resources into testing, whether it's randomized control trials or not. i don't think we'll get to where we need to be. so actually start with the notion of, let's races the evidentiary barrier. may not be quite as high as gold standard testifiesing, but should be pretty high.

>> host: you go through describing the family partnership, and in fact, in that case, to the credit of the leadership, when they were asked to take their model, which they had proven to other places, they were insistent to do more trials there to make sure that the model in that culture and that geography and that circumstance would fit. so if anything, that to me would point to, it's not inexpensive to do it right because you have to do a lot of it. actually, the other part is to do it right, in the case of the family partnership, it costs more. now, it costs more in the short term. the-long-term benefit to society and the economic benefit and so on and so forth -- i understand the argument -- but the fact is maybe part of the challenge here is, you can be much more expensive to do it right than it

would otherwise, and maybe that's also part of the big barrier we face with foundations, with government. they want to do it on the cheap. >> guest: i think that's right. so, let's tell the story of the nurse family partnership which you obviously know, which i tell in detail in the book. this is trying get the broader principles through great characters. some great, some awful, a lot in between. one of the great, whichs is guy david, a professor at the university of colorado denver, who came up with the idea of the nurse family partnership, which is early pregnancy intervention by nurses, to provide counseling to essentially at-risk mothers, provide them a lifestyle, career, child rearing, counseling, by nurses, and nurses would have -- would be people would be embarrassed to

take counseling from nurses, all part of the life progression. a great idea. actually a lot of good ideas. some which work, some which don't, and david had this idea -- probably -- a recent graduate from college, from johns hopkins, i think. and he went to graduate school and decided to test the idea, and tested it for 20 years, and he actually turned down offers to start implementing it. he said, worked in el mire. a i'm going to test is in memphis. worked in memphis, damn it, i'm going to test is in cocolorado and re refused to scale the inside'll in the knew it would-d until he knew it would work and infewerrated people, and a lot of knockoffs started at that time. and don't have the same impact. he did that 20 years, and out of that has come an organization we

can all be convinced actually contributes to people's lives. you're right, i don't anyoning goes to do 20 years. end don't have the money or patience. i wouldn't. it's unique. but it's not the 20-year path but a commitment to evidence is the lesson out of there. you're right, people like to do things faster and cheaper, but you have to know these are long-term solutions to long-term problems and we want to make a difference. >> host: the book roughly 210 pages long, something like that. the first 175 pages of that book are doing overall, with perhaps one exception, an excellent job of characterizing the problem. and then the remaining 40 some odd pages, there's a chapter that talks bat couple of marvelous hopeful signs, like

the nurse family partnership. and then the last ten pages are roughly where you very concretely talk about solutions that you want to recommend. and so as we start moving towards the last few minute wes have together, you see the possibility for a second book that maybe teases out the ten pages some more and talks more about -- because you've captured the crisis we're in, and perhaps a book on working toward even more about where we need to go and what we need to do. what do you think of that as an idea? >> guest: i'm not sure my marriage will survive that. my book just came out today. they the day we're doing the interview. so it's wonderfully premature to think about the second book. but i think the division of the book -- the superior question is -- it's heavy on pointing out

the problem, and it's sort of starting the conversation about the solutions. and that reflects, i think, that in order to really have a public conversation about solutions, we have to have people focused on the problem to understand there's a problem some something called a charitable sector out there. i mean, the numbers i use, i think just astonish people, the number of charities thecosis, the impact, the importance, the notion people don't actually put time and effort into the donation process. i think that is actually shocking to people, and until we get people focused on -- this what i hope comes out of it here -- the sense that this is a tremendously important sector with tremendous potential, but the ship is actually -- there's a ship and it's not -- it's moving in the wrong direction, and we need to turn that and that's donors understanding the construct and then we can have

the conversation about the second book. >> host: we still have a few minutes left. continuing to talk about hopeful signs of other directions going forward, one of -- i mentioned charting impact. another effort that is currently underway is called performwell. and this is a site where i think the urban institute is involved, child trends, social solutions, and that they are compiling evidence-based outcome indicators by different cause area. so, that could be a way of perhaps an organization that might not be randomized control trials but could model others that have done so, and then use that in their efforts. >> guest: i think that's right. there's no -- i think the complexion of the problem goes back to -- i often talk about the parallels or the lack of

parallels between the for are profit world and not for profit world. the for profit has the luxury of simple solutions. you either mike or you don't. at the end of the day, easy to know how you did the past. it's hard to predict the future. the charitable sector not that easy to tell how you do in the past. no single number defining the challenges and answers for charities. that's why it's hard. that's why it's taking you four cheers to launch charity navigator 3-point 0. the fact that people are start thing think about solutions is a great advance and one i think people will pay attention to it's in bart -- is in part because of my book i'll be happy. >> host: it's a good contribution for sure. the other part of this is

getting groups to set standards by cause area, and part of the effort is to try to get consensus around standards for how we measure the resultness a particular type of charity, and there's so much yet to be done in that. so, one of the simple dreams i have is rather than trying to get a charity commission, rather than trying to re-invent government, another way we can approach a simple goal, but daunting, is to set a goal that perhaps ten, 20 years from now every charity will not just have a financial auld did of a certain side, but will have a results audit, and the incentive for that is funding will follow it, and that you can benchmark yourself against others and come to collective consensus on the standards. the charity will pay for it themselves, the audit, just like the financial audit, but the

incentive as something simple, quote-unquote simple to get to as a goal. what are your thoughts on something like that to be set as where we try to get to? >> so, i know we're out of time and this is your last question so i'm actually going to try to leave a great point of consensus. i think that's that's a remarkable goal. clear, direct, and i think if we can get more and more charities and more and more donors to sign up to that concept we'll be doing well. >> host: thank you, it's a pleasure. >> guest: my pleasure being here with you, ken.

>> we have allowed a human rights nightmare to occur on our watch. in the year since dr. king's death, a vast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and jim crow. a system of mass incarceration that no doubt has dr. king turning in his grave today. the mass incarceration of poor people of color in the united states is tant tantamount to a

new caste system. shuttling children from schools to brand new prisons. a system that locks overwhelmingly poor people of color, into a permanent second class status, nearly as effectively as earlier systems of racial and social control answer did. it's the equivalent of jim crow. >> welcome to day two of the 2013 tucson festival of become being hell on the campus of the university of arizona. on your screen is the gallagher

theater where several event will be held. and book tv will be live all day long. here's our lineup for day two:

>> this is book tv on c-span2 live coverage. >> rajiv has the rare gift of being able to focus up close on sharp human detail. he uses small strokes to paint a broad picture. he listens more than he talks. big deal generals and top level sergeants like his company and speak to him frankly, but so do the grounds and some of the -- the grunts and other, whichs.

this month marks the 10th 10th anniversary of george h.w. george w. bush's invasion of iraq. soon we'll be declaring victory and leaving and afghans to clean up the mess there. and again, rajiv gives us insight in the new book. right now we face a short-term sequester to find $80 billion, but over the next decade we have to scrape up three to five trillion, which is just about what we managed to squander on an iraq war that left so many dead and so many more people who hate us. so, let's start there. in the front piece of the imperial city, he quotes t.e. lawrence who advised hit british superiors in 1917. do not try to do too much with

your own hands. bet their arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. it's their war and you are there to help. the actually, under the very odd conditions of arabia, your practical work will not be as good as perhaps you think it is. and among the flood of -- for the become is from mollie ivins who says it's like reading a horror novel. you want to put your face down and moan, how could we have let this happen? how could we have been so stupid? i mean, we had this invasion and a few of the reporters in the region were drown out by the washington juggernaut. some of us reported from vietnam recalled how thousand year old societies are a little suspicious of countries with a shopping list but it happens.

so, what's wrong with us? >> guest: good question, mort. it's great to be here. thank you all for coming out so early on a sunday morning, and, mort, thank you for sit hearing with me. we are a great nation. we like to think we can go out and fix other societies. we have a lot to offer but after spending two plus years observing our nation-building efforts in iraq, and now more recently, three years traveling become and forth to afghanistan, to observe what we're doing there and actually spending more money in afghanistan than iraq, and that war has been going on now for more years. it's the longest war our nation has ever been engaged in. longer than even the revolutionary war. i come away with mixed opinions about this. on one hand you look at both of these and say what are we doing in the business of trying to build, in some cases rebuild, in

the case of afghanistan, literally build from scratch, these shattered societies where there's very little human capacity, very little infrastructure to speak of, and we're sort of building it up from the ground. and it really -- what were we thinking? we could do this? at the same time, i'm not one of these people who is inherently a defeatist. though i have written two critical look at our engage independent this wars. like to think a nation of 300 pluses million people we do possess those who have the relevant and necessary subject matter expertise to provide that sort of modest, but essential help, to serve in some ways as modern-day lawrences in these societies. the problem is we don't select those people in the case of the early years of the iraq war, we chose individuals for plate cat

fidelity than for nation building expertise, and i write about how many of the higher -- many individuals who wanted to work for the coalition provisional authority in 2003 and 2004 were asked by officials at the pentagon questions about things like their views on roe v. wade and capitol punishment before they could go to baghdad. that got us people like a 24-year-old kid with no background in finance to re-open baghdad's stock exchange 0, a 21-year-old kid who boasted his most enjoyable job was as an ice cream truck driver. he was assigned to the team of americans asked to help rehabilitation iraq's interior ministry. in afghanistan, under the obama administration, this where is the supposed pros were going to be put in chart and the state department and usaid were supposed to go and brain in -- bring in the experts from the

nation's civil service and foreign service. the problem was many of our best people had already burnt out in iraq by then, and so they simply kind of put out a notice for jobs to be filled and waited for real estate maize to come in over the transome. instead of going out and scouring universities like this. ngos and nonprofits. the private sector. if i were obama, what i would have done us calling the human resources heads as apple and microsoft and google and say, give me one of your people for a year and go out and find people who are willing to live in these obscure conditions, fine people who are willing -- mo who possess these skills. we never did that. and so i'm not sure that when you look back at iraq and afghanistan, it really represents the best of what our nation can do if we really put our mind to it. >> host: thanks a lot. i don't want to start inside

baseball but i think it's important that -- reporters in situations like this, military situations, are no less important than medics. it's kind of the society's money. its their blood, and the people have to know what's going on. so the line in emerald city, a wonderful device dropping real vignettes through an interesting narrative and there's one in the grown zone where you say, about an hour into the visit, a party at the end, and at the end a coalition press officer noticed two journalists in the crowd and pulls them aside and said, who invited you here? no press is allowed here. this is a sort of a social occasion. the general said they had been invited buy coalition staffer. the press officer told the gorgeousists to stay put while she consulted with a superior. she returned later with a hand-held video camera.

kicking them out might cause a seen and would result in a story. the journalists could stay but they would have to promise on tape they wouldn't write what they saw. so, quote: we never came to a cpa barbecue. these people behind us aren't cpa people drinking beer. we were never here. and another -- we will not report the fact that everyone here is celebrating the end of the cpa. the short while later, bremer, we all remember him, lieutenant general sanchez joined the party. everyone wanted a picture with the two men, and some even asked for an autograph. as one has been sent a bunch of times, trying to stay out of pools and imbeds and every other damn thing people come up with to control reporters, and having covered vietnam where we could go anywhere we were dumb enough to go, how much did we suffer in iraq and then afghanistan by american reporters and other

reporters not getting a chance to see what was happening? >> guest: i think it very much circumscribed our knowledge what was happening in those settings. i bucked the community of fellow journalists bit spending as much time is a did in the green zone. early on. probably back -- april of 2003. so, almost ten years ago. u.s. troops had arrived in baghdad. a couple of weeks into the american presence there. there was already some early -- looting going on. the seite clergy was raising up, questions about security in parts of baghdad. and american troops were sort of posing the question, when do we quit -- get to go home? i am being